Introduction

The Ghana.GOV Citizen mobile app is the official mobile app of the Government of Ghana for all citizens and residents of the Republic of Ghana. This app serves as a bridge between the government of Ghana and its citizens enabling the citizens to receive official public notices from all arms and institutions of government, view job openings from both public and private organisations, pay their taxes, get access to all services from government and subsidies they qualify for.

I worked on this project as the Lead UX Designer throughout the project cycle from planning to research, wireframing, visual design, prototyping and testing. I collaborated with the engineering team to brainstorm ideas and problem solve. I also collaborated with stakeholders from the Ghana Revenue Authority to better understand the tax feature in the app.

The Process

Fighting corruption and building trust

The Ghana.GOV Citizen app was conceived as a response to the increased corruption amongst government officials and the vice president’s attempt to mitigate it. As the years go by we hear of government officials embezzling sums of money and items meant for citizens. This became very apparent in 2020 during the covid-19 pandemic. The government gave out lots of supplies and subsidies meant for citizens. However, a lot of them did not get to their intended destinations.

There was also the issue of nepotism where government officials filled vacant roles with members of their families – who were not necessarily the most qualified – without putting out a job post for the public to apply for. This problem required a way for the government to directly reach its citizens without needing to constantly rely on its officials.

Pain points

Embezzlement

For the distribution of subsidies, government struggled to know who needed what subsidy. Hence, subsidies were given to various government agencies who will then distribute them to citizens. However, the lack of a centralised database of all citizens meant the citizens who actually needed those subsidies do not always receive it.

Increasing unemployment rate

Finding jobs in Ghana is a huge topic that is constantly discussed on the streets and in the media. Although there are usually vacancies in the government agencies, existing staff usually filled those positions with relatives or friends, who are not always qualified. This nepotism contributed to a large number of qualified personnel being unemployed.

Information distribution

The Government of Ghana mainly relied on the media (FM & TV Stations, Newspapers and Online Blogs) to communicate to its citizens & residents about important notices.

Tax default

Payment of taxes is also another big issue in Ghana. Only 1.5 million of 6 million Ghanaian taxpayers actually pay taxes.

Understanding the problem

I collaborated with the project manager to better understand what the government was trying to achieve with this mobile app. We held multiple sessions with the various agencies and stakeholders as well as the Vice President of The Republic of Ghana at the time, Dr Mahamadu Bawumia.

The tax feature proved to be the most challenging bit of the project. We had multiple sessions with the Ghana Revenue Authority to understand their processes and how people file their taxes.

Insights found

Tax insights

Most people did not file their taxes because they do not:

• know how & where to begin the process.

• understand a lot of the 'tax jargon' on the tax form.

• know which sections of the tax form applied to them.

• want to go through the 'long, manual' processes when filing taxes.

• know how low the tax fees are.

• know there are reliefs available to them that will reduce the amount of tax to pay.

Official government notices

• The Government of Ghana mainly relied on the media (FM & TV Stations, Newspapers and Online Blogs) to communicate to its citizens & residents about important notices.

• This way of communicating meant citizens missed it and had to rely on being updated by their friends, relatives, colleagues, etc.

Subsidies insights

• Government struggles to know who needs what subsidy since there was no centralised database of all citizens.

• Subsidies were given to various government agencies who will then distribute them to citizens, not the citizens directly.

• The lack of a centralised database of all citizens meant the citizens who actually needed those subsidies do not always receive them.

Job insights

• Job vacancies in the public sector are usually offered to the friends and relatives of existing staff before it gets to the public.

• Qualified candidates do not know which government agency or institution has an opening.

Reframing the problem

The growing influence of smartphone apps in the daily lives of Ghanaians is changing the way Ghanaians connect, engage, entertain, trade, and manage their lifestyles. However, the various agencies of the government of Ghana are failing to take advantage of this trend and mainly rely on the old processes.

How might we leverage the influence of smartphone apps in the lives of Ghanaians to bridge the gap between them and the government of Ghana?

User flow

For a complex project like this, it was important to properly map out the user flow to create an understanding amongst all stakeholders

Sketching initial ideas

I sketched out a few ideas to give me a good sense of which layouts to present to the stakeholders

Key features

Design system

I built out a comprehensive design system that would later reflect in various parts of the app. This included colours, typography, icons, buttons, form elements, etc.